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The matter of legal drafting is a strongly composed method of writing, which can be quite scary for a person who have never dealt with it. The initial stage of writing a legal document is understanding its context. It includes learning the language applied in legal hearing, and the names of legal scholars and attorneys in every court case. When unfamiliar with the law sphere, a law dictionary is the first book of choice.

Here are a few legal drafting books, that will help you to excel in the legal drafting process.

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law (2011). This is a convenient and extensive guide to the language of law. It can be useful for both novice writers and the legal professionals. The dictionary includes more than 10,000 articles, as well as pronunciations and quotations.

Black’s Law Dictionary (2009). The most widely cited law book. With more than 45,000 articles, including new terms, it is considered to be the gold standard for the language of law.

Legal Writing in a Nutshell by Lynn Bahrych (2009). This is the lawyer’s handbook for writing more efficiently, plainly and precisely. The book provides keys to writing briefs and legal memoranda, creating clear and concise sentences, accurate use of legal language and grammar, and to convincing writing. It also describes methods for analysing and improving an individual writing style, as well as samples of briefs and legal memoranda to illustrate effective techniques.

Legal Writing Handbook: Analysis, Research, and Writing by Anne Enquist and Laurel Currie Oates. The book focuses on the key components of the legal writing: research, writing and analysis. With its comprehensive approach, the book is extremely popular among the law students and professors. Besides, it offers advice on how to avoid procrastination and other writing barriers.

Legal Writing by Sheila Simon and Richard K. Neumann (2011). This friendly book provides a brief yet complete coverage of appellate briefs, motion memos and office memos. An informal style teaches through the process of writing and the use of storytelling and policy to build an argument.

The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style by Bryan A. Garner, Jeff Newman, and Tiger Jackson (2006). The book includes an extensive guide to essential rules of legal writing. It focuses on the particular needs of legal writers and answers the questions about grammar and style. It gives authoritative and detailed advice on spelling, punctuation, footnotes, citations and capitalisation, with illustrations in legal context. It describes how legal writing differs from other styles of writing.

Legal Writing: A Systematic Approach by Diana Pratt (2004). The book is written for law students. Each step of the writing process is introduced separately, so students could master each skill before taking another one. The book includes an introduction to the law, the basic office memorandum, legal analysis, a brief to the trial court, appellate and oral advocacy.

Legal writing could be challenging for newcomers, as well as for the experienced writers. However, scholars publish legal drafting books and writing guides to support new legal writers, so they know where to start, and advanced ones helping them to polish their work.